Its Possession
Offers Peculiar Strategical Advantages, As A Force Lying There Can
Always Attack Either Railway, And Might Even Make, As Was Indeed
Intended, A Descent Into Natal.
For these mingled reasons of health
and of strategy a considerable number of burghers united in this
district under the command of the Bothas and of Smuts.
Their concentration had not escaped the notice of the British
military authorities, who welcomed any movement which might bring
to a focus that resistance which had been so nebulous and elusive.
Lord Kitchener having once seen the enemy fairly gathered into this
huge cover, undertook the difficult task of driving it from end to
end. For this enterprise General French was given the chief
command, and had under his orders no fewer than seven columns,
which started from different points of the Delagoa and of the Natal
railway lines, keeping in touch with each other and all trending
south and east. A glance at the map would show, however, that it
was a very large field for seven guns, and that it would need all
their alertness to prevent the driven game from breaking back.
Three columns started from the Delagoa line, namely,
Smith-Dorrien's from Wonderfontein (the most easterly), Campbell's
from Middelburg, and Alderson's from Eerstefabrieken, close to
Pretoria. Four columns came from the western railway line: General
Knox's from Kaalfontein, Major Allenby's from Zuurfontein (both
stations between Pretoria and Johannesburg), General Dartnell's
from Springs, close to Johannesburg, and finally General Colville
(not to be confused with Colvile) from Greylingstad in the south.
The whole movement resembled a huge drag net, of which
Wonderfontein and Greylingstad formed the ends, exactly one hundred
miles apart.
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